Objectivity…is the sturdiest ground of justice, and the despisers of objectivity are playing with fire. Feelings are a reedy basis for reform. After all, the other side also has feelings–which is how we wound up with the revolting solipsist in the Oval Office. In a democratic society, reform comes about my means of persuasion, and the feelings of others may not do the trick. I may not feel what you feel. I will not be convinced that you are right by the fervor of your feeling that you are right. I need reasons to agree with you, that is, appeals to principles, to rational accounts of preferences, to terms and values larger than each of us which, unlike, feelings, we may share.
Without objectivity, without the practice of detachment that make genuine deliberation possible, without tearing ourselves away from ourselves, justice in our society will mean only what the majority, or the crowd, or the media (all of them fickle) want it to mean. We will gag on our roots. We will continue to despise each other, some scorning the weak and others scorning the strong. Our system of disagreement will continue to be degraded into a system of umbrage, in which a dissenting opinion may be dismissed as “tone-deaf.” Empathy, where it exists, will be remorselessly selective and most often reserved for one’s own kind. (Down with himpathy! Up with herpathy!) We will remain stalled in our excitability. But none of the questions that we are asking as a society can be answered with a scream or a scowl.
Leon Wieseltier, “Steadying,” Liberties (Fall 2020), 409
So where does one obtain the criteria for “objectivity”? Is it possible? Given that I continually hear that the “modernist project” is dead, and we must embrace our tradition, acknowledging our biases, what is the message here? Do we get to truth through reason, civil discussion, and free speech? What about definitions of justice? Whose justice? What about those with more power and those whose voices are often left out? As a Christian (what’s that, even), how do I wake up daily with news of Ukraine, winter storm deaths, hungry children in my local schools, busloads of immigrants sent to Washington in 18-degree weather, and not despair? I know all of the Sunday school answers, but an answer that America can somehow, through persuasion and reasoned rhetoric, solve these “wicked problems” anytime soon seems less than plausible. I would like to talk more about it, more frequently, and in more venues, however. What’s (whose) story gets told?
It starts with acknowledging my own gaps and blind spots. I remember developing a course in African-American history. It took many months but by the end of my first year teaching it, I could never look at American history the same way again. I started asking questions about my own assumptions that I had taken for granted. For example, as I examined the 40s, and 50s which so many see as a time of greatness for America, I began to see that things didn’t look as rosy in Birmingham or Montgomery for folks whose skin is darker than my own. The truth was always there. But until I read and thought carefully from their perspective I was not seeing the complete picture. The story was incomplete. Being objective and just means seeing and telling the whole story – even the part that makes me feel uncomfortable. Even now I feel that there is still much to explore, more to uncover. Sometimes I have to just live with the discomfort, knowing that I am neither my own Saviour, nor the saviour of the person next to me. But I know who is. It would be a cruel trick that the One who claimed to be “the Truth” would make it unavailable for us mere mortals. But He has made it known. It just takes an entire lifetime to discover if we’re honest.